Singapore Financial Sector Sees Increased Cyber Attack Frequency

Source: Regulation Asia Editors, Regulation Asia 2020-07-24

In a new Carbon Black report, financial services firms cited a rise in attack frequency and sophistication, with custom malware the most frequently experienced attack.

Cybersecurity firm Carbon Black has released a new report assessing the cyber threat landscape in Singapore.

Based on a March survey of 251 CIOs, CTOs and CISOs from a variety of industries, the report says that attack frequency and sophistication appear to have lessened in Singapore, meaning that either the technologies companies have in place are working, or that attackers have become much more nuanced in their selection of targets.

The analysis shows that mid-sized organisations are facing a much more intense threat environment than their larger or smaller counterparts.

While only 43% of security professionals said the volume of attacks they faced has increased, attackers were said to be employing a more diverse range of tactics and techniques than ever before.

“As a result, breaches are common,” the report said. It found that 80% of Singapore organisations have suffered a data breach as a result of a cyberattack in the past 12 months, and the average organisation has experienced 1.67 breaches.

In the financial sector, 66% of respondents said the breaches were most frequently caused by OS vulnerabilities. They also cited a rise in attack frequency and sophistication, with custom malware the most frequently experienced attack, cited 75% of respondents.

About 59% of financial services respondents said breaches had caused severe reputational impact. In line with this, 68% of firms said they were planning to increase cyber defense budgets by 31-40%.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and related work-from-home measures, financial services firms saw a mean percentage of increase in attacks around 19.37%, compared to 93% for Singapore respondents.

In the financial sector, the inability to institute multi-factor authentication was cited as the biggest threat, with 47% of respondents claiming this to be the case.

The research also found that the financial services sector sees higher than average breach risk from mobile devices (56.5%).

Cyber Attack (Cyber-attack)

Singapore Financial Sector Sees Increased Cyber Attack Frequency

Subscribe to Our Newsletter!

Subscribe to Our Newsletter!